Weight of the World

Atlas, a sumptuous nude, drops the roquelaure of the world in a river; shows me bare shoulders as thick as Frida Kahlo’s brow. Where the world of his burden once was, a Launchpad in macrocosm has been built: a fleeting trireme, in titanic scale, launches from Frida’s translated brow. O caryatid, the map of your Na Pali shoulders!

Soaring ship climbs noctilucent clouds on fishing lines of latitude; this watercraft is Peter Pan the prestidigitator. I’m an astronaut astride a levitating bicycle; sorcery of flight. I’m trying to outrun leviathan in the castle clouds. In my space helmet, I lose my breath like so many nimbuses: Nike’s wings spread-eagle from the ship’s gunwales. I see Atlantis on the wingtips of improbable color.

My breath is flotsam in the ocean of infinity. As the flying ship hoists its revolutionary flags, my breathing undergoes metathesis: at this altitude, I no l1onger breath in and out. I now only have one lung; its shape is the figure eight flipped horizontally. This one lung will recycle one breath, in a glissando, forever.